Places for People – an Intelligent Information Management Case Study

Places for People is one of the largest property and leisure management, development and regeneration companies in the UK. They own or manage 150,000 homes and have assets in excess of £3.1 billion. Operating on a not-for-dividend basis, the organisation strives to ensure that the most is made out of all of their investments and as such it reinvests profits in areas which not only make commercial sense but also keep residents’ best interests in mind.

The problem

As an organisation that prides itself on the high level of corporate and social standards it adheres to, it is essential for Places for People to understand and act upon a wide range of key performance data. After a review of the current Business Intelligence architecture, it was realised that a new sustainable approach was required; one that leveraged the skills of both the IT team and the business team, to deliver a cost effective solution that would adapt to requirements both now and in the future.

After a full evaluation of options, they selected ProcessFlows Dashboards – A solution that would allow them to meet the changing requirements for data analytics, based on technology that would help them to use their resources more cost effectively, give them complete flexibility and be able to respond to requests for information quickly… without having to be reliant on SQL experts to extract reports.

Our Solution

ProcessFlows Dashboards provides a framework for extracting, analysing, visualising and then publishing data. The solution allows SQL experts and database administrators to maintain the management of the datamart whilst sharing the data securely with business users who can generate their own views of the data.

The key success criteria of the project were as follows:

Self-sufficient

Places for People had a lot of knowledge on reporting, dashboards and data manipulation and wanted a solution that they could manage internally. ProcessFlows Dashboards is designed so that users can generate their own dashboards and distribute them to a wide audience. The organisation has been able to deploy the majority of dashboards themselves, only needing assistance from the technical team with particularly complex elements.

Architecturally flexible

ProcessFlows Dashboards sit over the existing data infrastructure and architecture. This means that each element can work independently and provides a unique level of flexibility and choice.

Rapid deployment

Dashboard components once created can be utilised across a number of different views. This, combined with the ease of data-set creation and intradashboard relationships, means that even the most complex data visualisations are able to go from conception to deployment in rapid time.

Cost effective

This has proved to be a commercially sound investment, delivering a low cost of ownership and a rapid return on investment. The solution delivers excellent visualisation of the key performance indicators for the successful running of the business.